Two Types of Idlers!
Apart from painting, reading has kept my mind busy for a while. Have been reading Van Gogh's letters.
July 1880 : .......
So what do you want ? Does what happens inside show on the outside ? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet anybody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.
So then, what to do ? Stoke up that fire inside, have salt in yourself, wait patiently, yet with how much impatience, wait for the hour, when someone right might want to come and sit down by it - and to stay there, how should I know ? Let anyone who believes in God wait for the hour that will come sooner or later.
Now for the moment everything seems to be going wrong for me, and this has been the case for some considerable time, and may well stay like this for some time in the future, but it is possible that after everything appears to be going awry, things will improve later. I am not counting on it, perhaps it will happen, but if there should be some change for the better, I would count that as so much gain, I would be pleased, I would say, "At last! So there was something there after all."
I am writing to you rather at random just what comes comes to my pen.
I would be very pleased if you could see me as something other than a kind of idler.
Because there are quite different kinds of idler. There is the man who is idle from laziness and lack of character, from the baseness of his nature. You can, if you like take me for one of those.
Then there is the other kind of idler, who is idle despite himself, who is consumed inwardly by a great desire for action, but who does nothing, because it is impossible to do anything, because it is as if he were imprisoned in some way, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because inevitable circumstances have reduced him to this. Such a man does not always know himself what he could do, but he feels instinctively: nevertheless I am good at something, I can sense a reason for my existence! I know that I could be quite a different man! How could I be useful, what could I do ? There is something within me, but what is it ?
That is quite a different kind of idler. You can, if you like, take me for one of these.
A bird in a cage in spring knows quite well that there is something he would be good at, he feels strongly that there is something to be done, but he can't do it. What is it ?
He can't quite remember, then he gets some vague ideas, and says to himself, "The others a building their nests and producing their young, and raising their brood." Then he bangs his head against the bars of is cage. And the cage is still there, and the bird is mad with grief.
"There's a lazybones," says another bird who is passing. "He's comfortably off." However, the prisoner lives and does not die, nothing shows on the outside of what is going on inside him. He is in good health, he is more or less cheerful while the sun shines. Then the migration season comes, and a bout of melancholy.
"But", say the children who look after him in his cage, "he has everything he needs." Yet for his it means looking out at the swollen, stormy skies and feeling the revolt against his fate within himself. "I am in a cage, and so I lack nothing, fools! I have everything I need! Oh for pity's sake, give me freedom, to be a bird like other birds."
That idle fellow is like that idle bird.
And men are often faced with impossibility of doing anything, imprisoned in some kind of a horrible, horrible, very horrible cage. ...............
This excerpt from the books is from one of the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo Van Gogh. This excerpt made me think because the random things he wrote were so engaging and understandable, and I am sure it happens to all of us sometime or the other.
As an artist, I feel this, I see my fellow artist friends going through this quite often.
There are times when I am exactly the second type of idler. So preoccupied in the head, so consumed, but there is no output, no result. But as he rightly said, 'I lack nothing fools! Its the freedom. Let me a bird like other birds.'
July 1880 : .......
So what do you want ? Does what happens inside show on the outside ? There is such a great fire in one's soul, and yet anybody ever comes to warm themselves there, and passersby see nothing but a little smoke coming from the top of the chimney, and go on their way.
So then, what to do ? Stoke up that fire inside, have salt in yourself, wait patiently, yet with how much impatience, wait for the hour, when someone right might want to come and sit down by it - and to stay there, how should I know ? Let anyone who believes in God wait for the hour that will come sooner or later.
Now for the moment everything seems to be going wrong for me, and this has been the case for some considerable time, and may well stay like this for some time in the future, but it is possible that after everything appears to be going awry, things will improve later. I am not counting on it, perhaps it will happen, but if there should be some change for the better, I would count that as so much gain, I would be pleased, I would say, "At last! So there was something there after all."
I am writing to you rather at random just what comes comes to my pen.
I would be very pleased if you could see me as something other than a kind of idler.
Because there are quite different kinds of idler. There is the man who is idle from laziness and lack of character, from the baseness of his nature. You can, if you like take me for one of those.
Then there is the other kind of idler, who is idle despite himself, who is consumed inwardly by a great desire for action, but who does nothing, because it is impossible to do anything, because it is as if he were imprisoned in some way, because he lacks what he needs to be productive, because inevitable circumstances have reduced him to this. Such a man does not always know himself what he could do, but he feels instinctively: nevertheless I am good at something, I can sense a reason for my existence! I know that I could be quite a different man! How could I be useful, what could I do ? There is something within me, but what is it ?
That is quite a different kind of idler. You can, if you like, take me for one of these.
A bird in a cage in spring knows quite well that there is something he would be good at, he feels strongly that there is something to be done, but he can't do it. What is it ?
He can't quite remember, then he gets some vague ideas, and says to himself, "The others a building their nests and producing their young, and raising their brood." Then he bangs his head against the bars of is cage. And the cage is still there, and the bird is mad with grief.
"There's a lazybones," says another bird who is passing. "He's comfortably off." However, the prisoner lives and does not die, nothing shows on the outside of what is going on inside him. He is in good health, he is more or less cheerful while the sun shines. Then the migration season comes, and a bout of melancholy.
"But", say the children who look after him in his cage, "he has everything he needs." Yet for his it means looking out at the swollen, stormy skies and feeling the revolt against his fate within himself. "I am in a cage, and so I lack nothing, fools! I have everything I need! Oh for pity's sake, give me freedom, to be a bird like other birds."
That idle fellow is like that idle bird.
And men are often faced with impossibility of doing anything, imprisoned in some kind of a horrible, horrible, very horrible cage. ...............
This excerpt from the books is from one of the letters Van Gogh wrote to his brother, Theo Van Gogh. This excerpt made me think because the random things he wrote were so engaging and understandable, and I am sure it happens to all of us sometime or the other.
As an artist, I feel this, I see my fellow artist friends going through this quite often.
There are times when I am exactly the second type of idler. So preoccupied in the head, so consumed, but there is no output, no result. But as he rightly said, 'I lack nothing fools! Its the freedom. Let me a bird like other birds.'
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| Cover of 'Van Gogh's Letters' |
Leaving you'll with this amazing line ..
"Any art should be so strong, it can shatter the viewers' conventional beliefs." ~~ Rohit James (Photographer, and one of the faculties in my art school.)
Catch up later. Take care!!
Catch up later. Take care!!
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